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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4887 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 673 of 1317 26 August 2013 at 6:59pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I get frustrated too trying to find popular and fun French shows. would love to find
something like Drama Fever with French shows! They make their own subtitles for K-Dramas and other Asian popular shows, and have recently added a Latino section with shows from Argentina and Spain. I keep hoping that I'll log in one day and find a new French section. Maybe if we all wrote and asked / begged nicely? Edited by kanewai on 26 August 2013 at 7:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5530 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 674 of 1317 26 August 2013 at 7:31pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I think you have excellent taste in science fiction, sir. :-) Though I've never quite figured out what people see in Morgan. In French, I usually lean towards slightly lighter sci-fi: Scalzi, Campbell's Lost Fleet and so on, with a bit of Clarke or Herbert thrown in for good measure. There's also a tiny handful of first-rate French science fiction novels, and lots of excellent BDs. I struggle a bit with hard sci-fi in French; it's a surprisingly poetic sub-genre in many ways, and it's easy to lose the thread when human nature is no longer a given. It's about on par with reading Proust, actually. French ebooks are annoyingly hard to buy outside of France. There's a lot of public domain stuff, but the Kindle has only caught on in the last few years, and very little of the backlist is digitized. New releases are usually region-locked to France.
I find the following page to be fantastically useful for finding series: Tops SensCritique des Séries. They have lots of lists, each based on a specific theme, and new stuff rolls through periodically. The biggest trap with French TV is that you can't limit yourself to native French series. According to my in-laws' informal count, channels like France 2 and 5 show five nights of dubbed TV per week. Look at SensCritique or search YouTube for génériques de mon enfance to get a feel for what a native French media environment really looks like. Canal+ helps a little (it's the French equivalent of HBO or AMC), and there are certainly some excellent French series, but the reality is that the French watch American TV, and French science fiction fans watch Japanese anime. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4531 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 675 of 1317 26 August 2013 at 10:29pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Wow. You are about the restrictions between US and UK. I can see 1 Iain M Banks novel available on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddi gital-text&field-keywords=french%20iain%20m%20banks BUT 7 available on Amazon.co.uk: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/search/ref=ss_iss?field-lbr_books _authors_browse-bin=Iain+M.+Banks&keywords=french&qid=137753 6227&rh=n%3A341677031%2Cn%3A341689031%2Ck%3Afrench The same seems to be true about a lot of the other authors I have seen. I don't know which books you've read of Richard Morgan. Altered Carbon is my favorite: hard-boiled detective set in a future where the rich are immortal. I just started reading it in German. It's quite difficult compared to Murakami. I feel like I've gone back in my German by about six months, but it is readable even if I miss the odd sentence. I agree entirely that hard scifi is a lot harder than some other forms of literature. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5007 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 676 of 1317 26 August 2013 at 10:49pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I'm afraid the winning combination would be massive amounts of free time, minimum of other duties and worries and massive amounts of money. Well, I reduce the chance of getting something bad by downloading a few episodes of pirated version. And it sometimes, when it is worth it and I can get it for a fair price not three times as much as the natives, leads to buying the dvd. It would be different if I could just use some kind of european netflix and pay reasonable price per episode but as the system "works" now, I cannot. I have some good libraries around (like Mediatheque de l'Institut Francais or there is quite a lot in the municipal library and I guess the university libraris could have some good things too) but even the largest one in IFP doesn't have many dvds. And they focus on films considered to be either of "good quality" or things that are typically French. And no tv series. Not a single one. I think French is actually suffering from the ideas most minds connect with it. While the art, high culture and so on are very motivating for some kinds of people, the majority of population doesn't give a damn and will prefer the "fun" or "cool" languages. The francophone culture does have much more to offer than is being advertised, especially to young people or people more based in natural sciences than humanities or just people who want a language that leads to fun and relax. How can French, with the narrow variety of things that are being exported and presented elsewhere, compete with Spanish? Or even Italian or Russian these days. The francophone countries even have their own organisations and one of their common goal is support to the language and its spreading. Are they totally separated from real world and real people? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5007 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 677 of 1317 26 August 2013 at 10:57pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Thanks for the sci-fi ideas. I'm currently reading Maxime Chattam's Autre Monde which is a wonderful post apocalyptic tetralogy. Imagine french Stephen King with bit of Strugackij brothers and War of the Worlds in it. He had spent decades in the US so he is connecting the two traditions together. Perhaps you might like him. Or Grangé writes thrillers which sometimes include sci-fi pieces. L'Empire des loups is a good example. I am now reading these two authors and I totally love them. The whole world now watches the American TV. I cannot remember a single european Sci-fi tv series. But there is quite a lot of the crime solving ones, some soap operas, dramas, and a few historical ones. The european tv, as a whole, is in crisis (perhaps with the exception of the BBC). Not enough money, not enough ideas, not enough motivation in my opinion. Why bother themselves to create their own things when people love the american ones? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4907 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 678 of 1317 26 August 2013 at 11:16pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Er... Doctor Who? Emk, have you tried the original Planet of the Apes (La Planète des singes) by Pierre Boule? I read the English version a couple of years ago, and it has been in the back of my mind to read it in French one of these days. It doesn't look like it's on kindle anywhere yet. Edited by Jeffers on 26 August 2013 at 11:16pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5007 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 679 of 1317 27 August 2013 at 12:00am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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True, sorry. And the spin offs are awesome as well. I've just always felt the Great Britain is halfway to the US, no offence meant. Orwell seemed to think so. The anglosphere shares actually a lot of differences from the continental Europe.
The book is awesome! One of the true classics. And better than all the film versions, in my opinion. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5530 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 680 of 1317 27 August 2013 at 4:57am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I was overjoyed to hear that I might get even a single Ian Banks ebook. But when I clicked the link, it said "Your search 'french iain m banks' did not match any products in: Kindle Store" and offered me two papers books instead.
I tried his other famous book, Le Pont de la rivière Kwaï, and was soundly defeated by the first page. Not a lot of books in my collection which can still do that, either.
There aren't a huge number of sci-fi TV series in general, compared to something like police procedurals. But the children's series Ulysee 31 is a French/Japanese production, and Les Survivants is either sci-fi or fantasy or something of that general sort. There was also the short-lived and generally unloved Metal Hurlant Chronicles. Most of the action in French science fiction happens in bandes dessinées, which are widely available, incredibly diverse, and often quite good. The creative talent and raw material are in place for the French to produce excellent science fiction TV and movies. But the market just isn't there at the moment. Thank you for the book recommendations. And I agree that the prestigious French cultural industry tends to blind people to France's highly enjoyable pop culture. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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